A good news story Andrew of the wisdom of staying the course until the job is truly done!

The west had a similar very long term exit strategy after WW11 with the end result a reunited and prosperous self determining democratic Germany and the economic engine of Europe! The marshall plan was only available due to the application of Keynesian economics and the unprecedented postwar prosperity that enabled the west to be far more generous, than otherwise would have been the case?

Simply put, prosperous folk can afford to be more generous than folks down on the bone of their proverbial!

Similarly Japan, another completely transformed self governing democratic peace loving nation and transformed from the bankrupt basket case economy, where folks were arguably less prosperous than Afghanistan, into a rich economy the second largest for a while. And they used an instrument called social credit and undivided unity, sometimes referred to as the Japanese economic miracle! With the banks and the industrialists working for the state, until things turned completely around.

Only harmed by the rejection of the inherent socialism that transformed them, to be replaced by greed is good individualism and extreme capitalism.

Albeit they didn't have a counterproductive destructive taliban stuck in the middle ages, white anting from within and trying to self destruct rather than accept modernization and women with rights!

Agree you'll need a generation to make these changes stick and a nation so transformed as to be aghast at what the taliban prefer i.e., stone age feudalism and the generational endemic poverty that goes with it?
Rhrosty.

About what you would expect from a Liberal Nuffie,no brains,no feeling, no sense,I hope your enjoying the total mess in the Middle East that your unlamented leader and liar Howard along with Bush,Blair left us.
You say we should have stuck it out,for how long 10yrs,20yrs,100 yrs the Brits tried and they failed in the 18/19th century so did the Russians they bailed our,before we went in,maybe we should have invaded Pakistan as well,then IRAQ then as we are doing now had another war in IRAQ the last 3 have been such a wonderful success.
You have learned nothing since the 1st invasion of IRAQ your thicker than most Andrew

Afghanistan has proven an extremely expensive "military aid mission" far from Australian shores with no end in sight.

This article is certainly putting a misleading gloss on Afghanistan that has seen:

- withdrawal of most Western troops after acheiving a lasting what?

- resultant rapid advances of the Taliban which Afghan Government forces have proven totally unable to hold back eg. in Kunduz a city invaded by the Taliban last year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kunduz

- ongoing reliance on Western bribed warlords to actually control the country including most parts of Kabul.

- Uruzgan province where Aussis forces fought so hard (and too many died) was always mostly Taliban controlled at night. Australia had to pay off a local Warlord to keep the peace and stop blowing up western vehicles (ie. a Protection Racket).

This key Warlord connection to Australia has been killed, so even the appearance of "Australian peace-making" in Uruzgan has gone.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/live-hell-family-farkhunda-malikzada-afghan-woman-lynched-quran-burning/

Yep Afghanistan is an emerging paradise.

Get out. Leave them to their 7th century thinking

And it gets worse:

- Helmand Province is now mainly Taliban territory. Large numbers of British troops fought and died there for nothing.

- all over Afghanistan many of the warlords are Taliban or pass money to their local Taliban constituents.

ISIS is now moving into Afghanistan. Main current question is whether the Taliban who now control most of Afghanistan will be mostly driven out by ISIS?

- a practical question. Can the Western (including Saudi) aid money, that is channeled to the Taliban, be effective in bribing ISIS?

Check out the middle-of-the-road Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/isis-and-the-taliban-are-brutally-carving-up-modern-mafiastan-a6873436.html

"If anyone wants to understand the shame of Afghanistan - the yearly cull of civilians, the beheadings, the execution by single shots, the kidnapping of women - they have only to read the shocking UN report just published in Kabul. It is laced with fearful eyewitness descriptions of brutality.

ISIS features in its 87 pages with its usual depravity (in Afghanistan, of course, not in Iraq or Syria) and the report’s statistics show clearly that, last year, there were more civilians killed or wounded in the country than in any year since 2009."